He looked at the piles of food again, and it was like he was seeing it with new eyes. "This is wrong", he thought, "Letting food rot while people die of hunger. It's evil.".... He breathed in the too-sweet smell of rotting food, "I can stop this evil...
I was horribly self-conscious; I wanted everybody to look at me and think me the most fascinating creature in the world, and yet I died a small hideous death if I saw even one person throw a casual glance at me.
When we look at Abraham, Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, we see that God's grace can survive our three-ring-circuses of compromise, rationalization and weak faith.
Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the boo...
I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.
I am in the Aleph, the point at which everything is in the same place at the same time. I'm at a window, looking out at the world and its secret places, poetry lost in time and words left hanging in space...sentences that are perfectly understood, ev...
I wanted to hug him, tell him it was gonna be alright. Tell him I'm not as fragile as I look. But I can't hug him. I can't even hold his hand. I can't tell him it's gonna be alright, because it’s not; not as long as he's dead and I'm alive.
That night we push our cots just a little closer together, and look into each other's eyes in the moments before we fall asleep. When he finally drifts off, our fingers are twisted together in the space between the beds. I smile a little, and let mys...
and vinegar that makes them sour—and camomile that makes them bitter—and—and barley-sugar and such things that make children sweet-tempered. I only wish people knew that: then they wouldn’t be so stingy about it, you know—
I once inscribed the word "Ennui" backwards on my forehead, and I was so bored that I stared at it in the mirror for hours. And at the end of that time, I felt like Sheryl Crow, and I looked like Aleister Crowley.
But the queen--too long she has suffered the pain of love, hour by hour nursing the wound with her lifeblood, consumed by the fire buried in her heart. [...] His looks, his words, they pierce her heart and cling-- no peace, no rest for her body, love...
You cast a desperate look at Eric, who has not yet noticed that you’ve been bitten. Will I turn now? Am I becoming one of them? When Ghandi said, 'Be the change you want to see in the world,' I don’t think this is how he meant it.
Man makes history; woman is history. The reproduction of the species is feminine: it runs steadily and quietly through all species, animal or human, through all short-lived cultures. It is primary, unchanging, everlasting, maternal, plantlike, and cu...
As one of the little streams starts snaking my way, inching closer to the toe of my shoe, I hop over the spreading puddle and out of its reach. I don’t look back to see if it’s going to follow me. I’m already three blocks away and still gaining...
Hazard has conditioned us to live in hazard. All our pleasures are dependant upon it. Even though I arrange for a pleasure; and look forward to it, my eventual enjoyment of it is still a matter of hazard. Wherever time passes, there is hazard. You ma...
He leaned forward and bit her bottom lip. It was just the right size. He hated women with thin, judgmental lips. Smeared with dark red lipstick. Stingy and manipulative. Bev’s mouth looked ripe and vulnerable. He sucked on that soft lower lip for a...
Please be a traveler, not a tourist. Try new things, meet new people, and look beyond what’s right in front of you. Those are the keys to understanding this amazing world we live in.
I like the idea of people who've had some success in one form secretly wanting to be something else; I have some of that myself. I look for it in other people who've established themselves in some particular art form, and then you find out that they ...
Then she would wander through fields, over simple, poor land, looking carefully and keenly all round her, still getting used to being alive in the world, and feeling glad that everything in it was right for her — for her body, her heart, and her fr...
He was chugging brown pop from a can Jack had handed him while he stuffed nacho cheese Doritos in his face. I was glad to see he looked lots better, almost completely like himself, which proves Doritos and brown pop really are health foods.
If people fainted from too much thinking I’d scarcely ever be conscious,” Tabitha began at once. “I think and think all the time, and I’ve never fainted – not once.” She looked over at Barney enviously. “Why do the best things always ha...
